


like watching ice melt

by theredhoodie



Category: Bates Motel (2013)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 13:02:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3651306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredhoodie/pseuds/theredhoodie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dylan Massett finds himself ready to drown his sorrows in a bottle, the urge to run from his problems spiking. This is one problem that he's been running <i>toward</i> for some time now, but is his will strong enough to steer him back to where he's supposed to be?</p>
            </blockquote>





	like watching ice melt

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a jumbled mess that I wrote up after 3x04 when I was listening to “Hate Me” by Blue October. Because yes, I am still one of those people who think in terms of song-fics minus the actual song-in-the-fic part. I just have a lot of feelings and angst and I hate myself so here we go.
> 
> PS. Edited by myself, I apologize for any mistakes.

He really shouldn't be here, but his family was riddled with the running-away bug so it was really no surprise. He'd been trying to stay sober for months, and yet here he was, staring at a glass of rum and coke. He hadn't taken a sip yet. The glass was coated in condensation and it  _looked_  appealing. Would it be worth it? Sure, he hadn't gone cold turkey, but he hadn't had a drop of alcohol in almost three months.

"You okay there, darlin'?" The bartender's voice, homely and friendly, cut through his daze.

He looked up at her, seeing nothing beyond that open bartender face that most people in her profession had.

"I haven't had a drink in three months," he said, prodding the glass with a fingertip.

"Uh-huh. Why the change of heart?"

The bar was relatively empty considering it was still early in the afternoon, so he had her full attention.

People often said bartenders were the world's cheapest therapists. Maybe it was true. But he didn't really feel like unloading his entire unfortunate life on this woman. So he took the easy route out.

"My girlfriend and I had a fight," he said, which was the most watered down version of anything he could have said.

The woman nodded. "I've heard that before. What's so special about this fight that you're drinking again?" She was good. He tilted his head to the side, wondering if she was secretly a psychiatrist.

He ran the tip of his index finger along the rim of the glass. "It's true, y'know. We fight a lot. Not angry fights. I'm not the best communicator, she's got a temper like a raging fire, arguments happen. But…"

The unspoken words hung there in the air, his eyes shifting and zoning out once again. He was brought back to another time, one filled with white walls and beeping machines and a stubborn, tear stained face pushing him out of a room.

"But?" the bartender prodded.

He blinked. "But, this was different. She's um…she's sick. She's sick and she's scared, and she's pushing me away because of it. I've known her for  _years_  and she still thinks I'll run off at the first sign of trouble. She hasn't realized that I actually run  _toward_  trouble most of the time."

"And that's why you're here? Running  _toward_  trouble, right?"

"Ha, yeah.  _Right_." He raised his eyebrows and turned his eyes toward the ceiling. "You got me there."

"Mmhmm. How long have you been together?"

" _Together_  together? That uh…just sort of happened. She moved away to college. I stayed around with my family for a while before all that shit blew up. I…shit, I ran away from that fucked up mess and ended up in the same city as her."

"No shit. On purpose?"

"Nope. Just happened. I stayed there… _here_ , she went back home over the summer vacation to be closer to her doctors. The summer is always the worst for her because of the humidity. Her father found out how much she loved it here in California and moved down, so she was here all the time. We just got close, I guess."

"Sounds like one of those Nicholas Sparks bullshit movies."

He laughed and shook his head. "Oh, hell no. Definitely not. I was involved with some pretty…fuck, illegal shit back in our old town." He perched his elbow on the edge of the bar and ran his blunt fingernails across his scalp. "She graduated college. It was a big dream for her. Invited me to the ceremony and everything."

The bell on the door jingled, signaling a new customer. There was a second tender who ventured over to help the newcomer.

"Her dad wasn't that happy about who I was. I mean, the ties to my family back home? Not good ones. But I'd been away from them for years. Probably the smartest thing I'd ever done. Hardest thing…but smartest. She said that he saw a whole new me, being away from my family."

"Life's never easy, is it?"

"It's not." He glanced back down at the glass. It was looking a little less tempting. "I still think he was pretty pissed when she moved out. I mean, she was twenty-two, she wanted to live on her own. I offered for her to live with me but…god, she's stubborn as hell. Her place was close to mine, so it worked."

"Sounds like quite a girl you got there."

"Yeah. She had the biggest crush on my brother for a while when we first moved to town and they went out for a while. I didn't know how that'd go over, but he was sort of…he was unstable, and she was too driven and independent to put up with it so that didn't last long. I um…I have no idea why I just thought of that."

"It's not just the alcohol that's a truth serum in here. And, you obviously wanna talk about this stuff. So just…let it flow. It's therapeutic, or so I hear."

"So I've been told," he replied, once again running his finger around the rim of his glass repeatedly in fluid motions. "Um…she started getting sicker. She's lived with this disease her entire life. The first day I met her, she said she wouldn't live past twenty-seven, but she lived life  _too_  much and the disease is progressing faster than the doctors originally thought."

"Oh." The bartender's voice was a new shade of empathy.

"So they say she's got a year at most now, and she's not even twenty-five." And there it was. The kicker. Hell,  _he_  had already outlived her first estimated life expectancy. He felt  _guilty_  for that: that he got to live a long life and she didn't. It really wasn't fair. But since when was the fucking world fair? Never, not in his lifetime.

"Oh shit. I'm sorry, that's terrible."

He nodded into his glass. He spent a majority of his life feeling unwanted, running away and running to things for no reason other than fucked up emotional needs that were never fully sated. He got  _away_  from that, or so he'd thought. But here he was, feeling guilty and worthless, and that liquor was looking quenching once again. "And the thing is…if she stays in the hospital, she'll live longer. But she refuses to stay."

His vision blurred, though it was hard to tell in the dim lighting. His hand fell to the counter, fingers grasping the glass. He lifted it to his mouth, but it was snatched away just before he tilted it back.

"What the hell," he said out of instinct.

"Look, I don't usually do this," the woman said, holding the glass close to her body and away from him. "But I don't think I can let you break your three months sober. Your story is sad. I'm sorry that your girlfriend is dying, but if you really want to help her, you should do whatever she wants, no matter what it is. A woman's dying wish and all that."

If it were any other time, if it had been five years ago give or take, he would have definitely caused a scene. However, that didn't happen. Half because she was right, even if she only knew part of the situation, and half because his phone rang in his pocket. He gave the bartender a hard look before dragging his phone out of his pocket. He took a deep breath, swiped left and lifted the phone to his ear. He didn't say anything.

"Dylan?"

He took in a deep breath and rested his elbows on the countertop. The bartender dumped his drink down the sink and gave him a small, sad smile before moving along to give him privacy.

"Yeah," he said before clearing his throat.

"I'm so sorry." Her voice betrayed her. She had definitely been crying more since he left.

He closed his eyes and rubbed his eyelids with the pads of his fingers. "Emma, don't—"

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell at you like that."

"We fight. It happens."

There was silence from both ends. He opened his eyes and glanced at the clock above the shelves. He'd been sitting in this bar for two hours.

"Where did you go?"

"The Harp."

She sniffed. "Oh. Have you been drinking?"

"No." He heard her scoff of disbelief. "I mean it. I ordered a drink but I just sat here until the ice melted."

"Really?" A soft, airy laugh filtered through the line. "That doesn't sound like you at all."

He half smiled. "I know."

Her voice got even quieter than usual. "Can you…would you come back? Visiting hours are still open."

"Yeah. Yeah, of course. I'll be there in fifteen."

"Okay."

He hung up and got off the barstool. Pulling out his wallet, he grabbed a ten and slid it across the counter right toward the bartender who had listened to his sob story. She looked at him and shook her head.

"Oh please, I can't take your money."

"Take it, leave it, rip it into tiny pieces, whatever you wanna do." He nudged it closer to her. "Thanks."

The entire drive back to the hospital, he kept going back and forth between knowing he should stay and support Emma because this is when she needed people the most, especially since she claimed that she didn't, and that constant voice in the back of his head telling him that he was nothing but bad news and he was the opposite of anything Emma needed. It wasn't the first time he had to fight his demons, and it definitely wouldn't be the last.

The hospital loomed over him, a beacon of hope and also destroyer of hope all at once. It was familiar. Both the building and the double-sided symbolism behind it. The blast of air when he walked through the sliding doors, signing in in the front, taking the elevator to the proper floor…it was all familiar. These halls knew his footfalls as well as he knew where the find the best snacks and coffee.

He hesitated just before he reached her door. The last time he was here, he found Emma getting dressed—which was a feat considering she had an IV in her arm. He told her she had to get back into bed, that they had to  _talk_  about this, but that just resulted in her bursting into tears and yelling at him for making her stay here and shoving him out of the room.

"Emma?" He pushed the door open and stepped inside. She was sitting cross legged on the bed, out of her street pants and back into the thin blue tie-ons that they gave her instead. The door shut softly behind him.

"Hi," she said, getting off of the bed and onto her feet. She stayed near the bed this time. The IV pole was back beside her instead of lying on the floor from where it fell when she kicked him out. "Did you really just sit at a bar for two hours watching ice melt?"

"Yeah," he said sheepishly.

She laughed and then bit down on her bottom lip when her eyes filled. "This is ridiculous. I hate when we fight." She lifted out a hand, but he was already there. She tucked her head under his chin and he held her close. Her hands gripped onto his jacket and she pressed her face against his chest, oxygen tube and all. He smoothed a hand over her hair and closed his eyes.

Living lives built up around secret and lies and people walking on eggshells didn't lead to the easiest of times. But both of them had gotten away from a toxic environment and they had even found their ways back to each other. He and Emma both had relationships and flings in the few years post-Bates Motel, and yet they managed to become friends during that time. And look at them now.

Emma moved first, tilting her head back and looking up at him with a slightly quizzical look. "I'm really tired, it's embarrassing," she said with a small frown. She didn't need to say that the fighting had taken its toll.

He shook his head at her stubbornness, both at putting up and keeping up such a front. It was a frustrating and endearing quality that was entirely Emma. "Get back into bed," he said. She didn't have far to go, just a few inches back.

She pulled her legs up and stretched out, lying on one side of the mattress. He walked around the end of the bed, shrugged off his jacket and tossed it onto the chair under the window.

"I don't blame you, Dylan," Emma said softly, tucking her IV free arm under her head like an extra pillow and looking up at him. "I had to come here."

He  _had_  to bring her here. She had gotten a bad fit and couldn't breathe, there was no other place he could have brought her. They just hadn't expected to hear that her life expectancy was going to be cut so short.

He didn't say anything, only sat down on the edge of the bed and swung his legs up, taking up the rest of the space. She rested her chin on his shoulder and slid her other hand across his abdomen to grab his other hand, lacing their fingers together. The ugly IV with tape to keep it in stood out on the top of her hand.

"I don't want to die here," she said once the room got quiet enough to hear a pin drop. Her voice wavered in that way that he recognized as her trying not to cry. "I don't want to die here in this room with these machines around me, ticking down my last minutes."

"I know," he said softly.

"I want to…I want to live my life, I don't want to prolong it _just_  because I can. What's the point in staying alive if I'm just  _surviving_  and not really  _living_?"

These were always undertones in their arguments in the past few months. He squeezed her hand and she curled up closer to him, enough so he could slip his arm around her shoulders and rest his fingertips against her arm.

"I know, I know that's how you feel," Dylan said, frowning at the ceiling. "I've lost so much, I've just been selfishly holding onto you all this time." The tiles blurred. "I don't want to lose you."

Emma pushed her lips together, her chin quivering beneath. "I don't want to die, Dylan."

There was nothing he could say to that. Nothing he could do but gather her up in his arms and let her cry out her fears. She spent her life boasting she wasn't scared to die, but who wasn't scared to die? People who had nothing to live for, that's who.

He kept his arms around her—she was so small, always so small, but she felt so much smaller now—and her hands fisted in his t-shirt, her tears staining the fabric a darker shade of blue. He pressed his lips against her hair and wondered, not for the first or even second time that day, why someone like him got a full lifeline and someone like Emma's was cut so short.

Eventually, she stopped crying and settled against him with the tension eased from her limbs. He knew how she hated to feel weak, how she always wanted to do things on her own. But even the strongest people needed someone else there.

"Still feeling tired?" he asked once the room grew silent again.

Her cheek was pressed against his chest. "Yeah."

"Can you stay awake for like five minutes? I have something to ask you."

She frowned, but pushed herself away and off of him until she was sitting, cross legged with one knee perched against his hip bone. She knew her face was red and blotchy and her eyes were puffy, but he'd seen her in much worse shape before, she didn't care. "What is it?"

He rested one hand on her knee and the other tucked behind his head. "Do you wanna move in together?"

She furrowed her eyebrows. "What?"

"Do you wanna move in together? I won't force you to wither away in a hospital, Emma. If you want to live, we should live. But I'm gonna be selfish and I'm gonna spend a lot of time with you."

Her forehead smoothed out and she tilted her head to the side.

"We can travel, too. See your top ten places. And have a place to call home to come back to."

She looked at him as if he'd suggested going scuba diving or taking a rocket to the moon. "Are you serious?" she asked, as if he'd just popped  _the_  question.

"Yes."

She leaned forward, rested her hands on either side of his face and kissed him, long and sweet, that kind of kiss that was an answer all in itself. "I love you," she said, stroking her thumbs over the stubble creeping up toward his cheekbones.

"I love you, too. That's why I gotta be a little selfish."

She nodded, her nose brushing against his. "It's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me. You can be totally selfish." She kissed him again before nestling down beside him.

"They're gonna kick me out soon," he mentioned.

She shrugged a slender shoulder. "You can take them."

He smiled at her words. They both knew they wouldn't get a storybook ending, but that didn't mean he couldn't help her  _live_  before she was gone. She deserved that and more; she deserved everything he could give her and he would give her everything.

Her breathing steadied and he almost  _felt_  her get yanked into slumber. It happened quickly, leaving him awake and alone in a hospital room, with the sunset bleeding into the sky with the last few rays of the day.

 

**Author's Note:**

> And then, in like 5 months, Emma dies in Dylan’s arms. I’m literally the devil incarnate I’m so sorry.


End file.
